Soul – first-look review

It used to be that audi­ences had to wait a few years between Pixar films, as each one took a long time to pro­duce, and as such, the results were always high­ly antic­i­pat­ed by adults and chil­dren alike. Now, as Pixar – along­side Stu­dio Ghi­b­li – are per­haps the most famous ani­ma­tion stu­dio on the plan­et, the wait between their films has become much short­er, thanks to Disney’s involve­ment and tech­no­log­i­cal advancement.

But late­ly it’s felt a lit­tle like those clever folks in Emeryville were phon­ing it in. Their last release (Onward, approx­i­mate­ly 20 years ago, in March of this year) was an under­whelm­ing elven adven­ture star­ring Chris Pratt and Tom Hol­land, and pri­or to that came two sequels in the form of Toy Sto­ry 4 and Incred­i­bles 2, which didn’t quite live up to the mag­ic of their pre­de­ces­sors. It’s some­thing of a relief, then, that their lat­est orig­i­nal sto­ry is their best work since 2015’s Inside Out.

Joe Gard­ner (Jamie Foxx) is a mid­dle-aged mid­dle-school band teacher in New York City, who’s been beat­en down by life repeat­ed­ly despite his tal­ent and pas­sion for jazz music. When he’s final­ly offered a gig with leg­endary sax­o­phon­ist Dorothea Williams (Angela Bas­sett) he won’t let any­thing stand in his way – not even death.

After an unfor­tu­nate acci­dent with an open man­hole cov­er, he’s trans­port­ed to The Great Before, where souls are assigned per­son­al­i­ties before being sent to earth to become peo­ple. In his attempts to get back to earth and his chance at star­dom, he’s part­nered with 22 (Tina Fey) an apa­thet­ic soul who doesn’t want to become human.

If Coco dealt with The Great Beyond and let­ting go, Soul is about grab­bing what you’ve got with both hands and cel­e­brat­ing the joy of being alive. Whether it’s play­ing the piano, eat­ing a slice of pep­per­oni piz­za or just watch­ing the wind blow through the trees, there’s so much admi­ra­tion for the very act of being in the film – which per­haps hits even hard­er giv­en the uncer­tain­ty which occu­pies every wak­ing minute of our present day.

Despite the whacky body-swap plot involv­ing a chub­by cat called Mr Mit­tens, Soul also feels more con­scious­ly geared towards an old­er audi­ence, which makes sense con­sid­er­ing most of the chil­dren who grew up with Pixar’s ear­li­est films are now in their thir­ties and for­ties. It’s dif­fi­cult to say how much mileage chil­dren will get out of the sto­ry­line, but the cute crit­ters and shim­mery teal design of the Great Before are child-friend­ly enough to not make death seem com­plete­ly harrowing.

New York has nev­er looked as pret­ty as it does in the Pixar uni­verse, and the score – com­posed by Trent Reznor and Atti­cus Ross with jazz arrange­ments by Jon Batiste – is a thing of beau­ty, com­bin­ing the ethe­re­al with the exper­i­men­tal with enough enthu­si­asm to con­vert even the jazz-sceptics.

Here’s hop­ing that Pixar’s invest­ment in new sto­ry­telling tal­ent con­tin­ues; bring­ing in the supreme­ly tal­ent­ed play­wright Kemp Pow­ers as co-direc­tor and co-writer has result­ed in a sto­ry that feels fresh and fun­ny while retain­ing the Pixar spark. And as all their best films have a fun­da­men­tal­ly valu­able mes­sage, so does this one.

For every­one who’s ever felt they weren’t good enough, Soul sug­gests a move towards accept­ing that life isn’t some­thing you can fig­ure out on the first try.